As stated above, one of the main tasks of a financial clearing system is to keep track of positions for one or several accounts in the system. Usually, positions are “locked” or frozen at the end of a so called clearing cycle, with the trades that affected that particular clearing cycle having been executed during a corresponding so called trading cycle. Until recently, a clearing cycle and its corresponding trading cycle would also essentially coincide in time, i.e. each clearing cycle would include trades having been executed before the closing time of the trading cycle, for example 5 P.M., with the clearing cycle possibly being open until a slightly later point in time, for example 5:30 PM, in order to enable trades that had been executed during the trading cycle to be processed by the clearing system. In this way, it could always be seen which clearing cycle that a trade belonged to, and how the trade should thus update the positions in the system.
However, recently there has been a demand for the possibility of executing trades during extended opening hours, possibly on a 24 hour basis. Since a clearing cycle, inter alia for practical reasons, should be open longer than the corresponding trading cycle, this can lead to two clearing cycles being open at the same time, i.e. there might be an overlap in time for two different clearing cycles. This, in turn, might lead to difficulties or uncertainties when trying to get an overview of the total situation in an account, or in the system as a whole.
The demands for longer trading cycles thus impose new demands on clearing systems, such as, for example, the following:                Separation between trades which are executed during a current first trading clearing cycle but which are reported to the system during a later second trading cycle.        The ability to show the proper balance for a position, where the balance reflects the actual situation with all transactions taken into account, and thus, shows all trades regardless of when they were executed.        
In addition, it is desirable for trades to include information as to how the trade affects the position, e.g., bought or sold, “open” or “close,” number of contracts, etc.